


lead sails (and paper anchors)

by grandloves



Series: through the stars we'll go [1]
Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: ATEEZ (Band) Are Pirates, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Drug Withdrawal, Dystopia, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, I'm Going to Hell, Intersex, Kidnapping, M/M, Minor Character Death, OT8, Pirates, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sky Pirates, Slavery, Surrealism, Torture, everyone fucks everyone at some point, love that that's a tag, no editing whatsoever because i am above the law
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:33:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25080196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grandloves/pseuds/grandloves
Summary: the new world runs on stardust and pills made of lightning. it deals in hands that feed and choke, crushes halos in its grasp and builds markets off the misery of broken souls and orphaned children. meet boys with the blood of dying suns; with moonlight on their skin, stained with the scent of death. meet boys that board a ship to follow their whims and carve new constellations into the sky. meet boys that shake their chains free and sink their teeth into the system-not because they've got a penchant for blood and money,but because the things they love are meant to be chased.
Relationships: Choi San/Jung Wooyoung/Kang Yeosang, Kim Hongjoong/Park Seonghwa
Series: through the stars we'll go [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1816393
Comments: 10
Kudos: 40





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> what’s crack-a-lackin’ atiny 
> 
> it’s been a long time since i’ve written fic - and the first time i’ve written for atz, so i’m a bit nervous about my delivery/storytelling etc but my love for them and this concept outweighed my uncertainty, so! here i am. pls enjoy.

even deep in the guts of the desert, life found a way. it clung to the riverbend and drove out the weak for its own survival. the universe was a stark and deadly thing; it aimed to stomp humanity into the dirt, and swallow down its churchyards for fun. still, desperation was a monster— a bigger monster than the first of the fires, born to craft something stronger and feed on the old world, on old morals, on old gods.

hongjoong didn’t believe in gods either, not since mama died. he watched father dig her a shallow grave and let himself play pretend anyways. children were good at imagining things, things that only lasted as long as the plants she kept on the windowsill. reality settled in and it was heavy when it wilted into soil with the orchids; it was like she’d died once, and then again with the things she cared for. she was gone, and with her, he lost the parts of him that made him a child.

father tried to make up for it, to fill that space.

he tried, until he left, for he was a lost man called home, and home was somewhere other than rotting in poverty with his son. hongjoong didn’t blame him for it. if he could’ve up and left, he would have, too. that didn’t mean it didn’t sting when he caught glimpses of his father in the wanted columns, not days later. for arson, and looting— piracy, most of all. in fact, the bounty on his head was impressive, if hongjoong could even call himself impressed when he was dragged from that childhood home, young and raw with hurt as nothing more than a roach in the eyes of giants.

_please_ , he’d begged, _i don’t want to go! i can’t leave mama_ , because she was buried in her gardens out back, and— and she’d be lonely, and oh, hongjoong knew what it was like to be lonely— but they’d slapped the noise from his mouth and tossed him in the back of the wagon, windows thrown open on purpose so he could watch his past go up in flames.

the revolutionization of stardust was what saved the world. it laced the sands in neon redemption, raised architecture and new satellites from nothing, spun silver into fabric. it was magic, if electricity could be so. it made kings out of men and birthed an industry no one could deny the power of; stardust was the new currency. no proper society existed without it.

despite all that, the sky from which it came was a lowly place to be. the sky was for miners and thieves, for pirates and orphans just like hongjoong himself. while modern day royalty ate their weight in candied grapes, drinking fresh water clear as crystal; took satisfaction in the castles they called home, below. safe on the ground.

a man owned a ship.

a rich man owned a dozen, and never set foot on a single one.

so with one look at his scrawny, disheveled appearance, hongjoong was slated for the mining industry. he arrived to the training camp dressed in rags and dirt, resigned to being quiet. his story might have ended there, simply, trained to fly and bow his head, before being sent into the skies until he outgrew his use.

but instead, it was there he met park seonghwa — a boy that had not had the voice beaten out of him yet. seonghwa, on that first night, hugged hongjoong’s head to his chest and drew up lullabies vaguely familiar to a life reduced to ash.

they were inseparable from then, where duty permitted they be. they ate together, trained together, bunked together. wound and wove themselves into the same presence, one that whispered secrets in the dark for the nights they were too afraid to dream.

“ever thought about it?” hongjoong’s head was pillowed on seonghwa’s bicep. they’ve become the sort to lay out their whims on the safety of their papery pillowcase, let their ruminations dance across their skin before dawn chased it all away. sometimes things disappeared faster when they were said out loud, and sometimes that was for the better. the system ate hope for breakfast, sucked it like the meat from an artichoke leaf. this was one of those times.

“about?”

“leaving. this.” hongjoong waved a vague hand. were it light out, they’d see the dust dancing in its wake. the desert was a dry place, and no amount of air filtration could remove every particle. if gaians hadn’t evolved to account for it, hongjoong’s sure they’d all be dying of one lung disease or another by now. “it isn’t like we don’t know how to fly.”

“i'm sure we’ve all thought about it.” the elder, though only slightly so, was always a little more reserved and controlled, while hongjoong let his presence be, unapologetically. it got him into trouble often. still, hongjoong could see something in seonghwa’s eyes; a certain light held down and snuffed against its will, like flames beneath a heavy blanket. there was a pause, while seonghwa summoned the _but_ hongjoong knew was coming. “but birds with clipped wings cannot fly whether they know how to or not.”

hongjoong flipped onto his side then, shimmied and twisted awkwardly within the tightness of the cot. the moon came through the skylights overhead, peered in on them, and bloomed over seonghwa’s nose; dragged a thread of beauty down the rest of his profile, into the collar of his night shirt. it occurred to hongjoong then that he was jealous of it, silver and lovely, stitched to the highlights of the elder’s face. so he moved without thinking because there were lots of things he’d thought about, and if he dared imagine following his father into the sky then surely, _surely_ he’d have thought about something so simple as kissing the beautiful boy beside him.

he did.

seonghwa pushed him away, held him where he hovered just above, but only to regard him with eyes that read between the lines. he was mapping out, hongjoong realized, when he was pulled back in, how hard to kiss him back.

and they woke the next morning a little different than they’d fallen asleep.

out in the courtyards, seonghwa dragged him through the desert brush, through the thorny thickets meant to be a warning sign. they emerged on the other side scraped and dirty, blood welling, stinging with welts. pressed between splinters and a chain link fence that was charged at the top if they tried to climb. hongjoong caught a flash of glitter, smeared beneath seonghwa’s cheek like a little golden tear, but he was hushed before he could ask.

“i’ve never told anyone about this, but i trust you— so please,” seonghwa breathed, into their hushed pocket of space.

distantly, hongjoong could hear their training unit pretend to be boys while they could, toss their youth about beneath the skies they’d be losing it to in a few month’s time. they were only allotted thirty minutes of this.. _intermission_ , as the greyjackets called it. once before performance trials, another before lights-out. it was as much a taste of freedom as one could get, walled in by concrete and briar patches and starcannons should they so much as think of an uprising.

he could also hear the exhaustion ribboning seonghwa’s voice. the _please don’t break me, don’t make me regret you and i_ underneath, cool and soft as peony petals from his mother’s garden. hongjoong only waited, lips parted, going chapped in the dry air. 

seonghwa’s fingertips caught fire.

they struck ignition easily like a match, and the flames licked down his knuckles in blazing marigolds that dusted hongjoong’s cheeks with heat from where he lingered an arm’s length away. “oh— _oh_.”

no one knows where the paths of evolution branched apart, or when bloodlines were tangled between the cosmos and the earth. only that more than gaians walked life these days; helians were people of skyfire. emotion filled their bellies in trade for the healing properties of their blood; a single lick of their tongues granted reprieve from open wounds and stitched broken men back together again. golden hour burst through their palms as they reached for the sun— whom they belonged to most.

they were beautiful creatures, and very much sought after. their blood was black market material, and hongjoong could see that it rushed hot and heavy in the veins of the boy before him, regarding him with the eyes of a sinner trapped in church; hongjoong didn’t know how seonghwa has kept it a secret for so long, but with a metaphorical gun to his head just for the bad luck of existing, maybe that was as good as an incentive as any.

_“no!”_

seonghwa fought, argued, but he was a boy, just a boy, and papa pushed him down in the crawlspace beneath the floorboards like a secret stuffed into a box. he was the only one that fit in there, with his back curled against the raid while he shoved his face into a stack of canned peaches hidden away for a bad time.

tonight could make that bad time look like a waltz down by the river.

there was yelling— a lot of yelling— and a gunshot. shattered glass, splintered wood. he could taste it: fear, aggression, and pain. emotions like those always tasted rich, like dark chocolate and cherries, but the guilt siphoned off his skin for licking his mother’s death from the air made it bitter.

the little helian boy waited a hundred-thousand heartbeats, recited old poetry to himself and counted the seconds it took him to stop crying before he inched out of the rubble.

he’d been taught his blood was special, and being special was a large price to pay. large enough to hang a family for, to haul them out into the night and vial up the antidotes of every disease known to doctors and gods alike. helians were rare, though, and hard to find. papa would be wrapped in chains and zip-cords, strapped down and twisted up in tubing, siphoned away of their gold. their health. kept to harvest.

not hours after the raid was seonghwa snatched off the streets and put into the system, but by then he understood the importance of silence and forced himself into a gaian frame, suppressed beneath the weight of his grief.

now he was here, letting fire fly from his fingers for the only boy he’s ever allowed himself to trust since that night. he was here with one kim hongjoong, who stumbled off the loading ramp looking wild as wind and lost just like him.

“that’s so beautiful.” hongjoong’s cheekbones caught the stain of amber, and it looked stunning on him. gods, he looked like heaven. seonghwa still believed in them— in gods. they must exist, if they brought him an angel.

“...yeah?”

“yeah.” hongjoong was infatuated. those matchstick fingers reminded him of the circus roses his mama liked so much, little whorls of fireblossoms nestled in her gardens by the handful. they were like the sparklers father brought home on his birthday one year. a forbidden gift, for no one played with fire these days, until seonghwa taught him the difference between playing with fire and falling in love with it.

seonghwa kept him warm when the wind blew too hard, lit up the way. made a beacon for him to come home to. he forged, one night, a pair of necklaces from the watch hongjoong stole off a greyjacket some nights ago as he’d swept by in observation— clearly not observing closely enough to notice his missing jewelry. light burst and stole oxygen from between seonghwa’s cupped palms in the secrecy of the latrines (for if there was anywhere the greyjackets liked to avoid, it was there) and from that came two pendants that which fit seamlessly into one another and flickered like a sundrop when connected. those pendants never came off, always tucked carefully beneath their collars, swinging soothingly against their skin.

the night they were damned to part, the pendant seemed to scald, stuck just over hongjoong’s heart as if trying to melt itself inside his chest. he shifted in discomfort until seonghwa pulled him close and kept him still, spoke into the place between their lips. “don’t forget about me. promise you won’t.” seonghwa’s gaze is steady, but his voice is layered under solar flares and molten sorrow. the two of them were set to split. the elder would be sent to train at a different base for militaristic purposes, as sky pirates were on the rise and yet again hongjoong could only think first of the father that left him behind— and now the boy that made that empty space feel full once more with his gardens of fireblossoms and forbidden sparklers and stolen kisses.

“do you think i could forget about the sun?” hongjoong teases, but he misses seonghwa already, even as his fingertips trace the bridge of his nose.

“i’m too weak to be a sun.” even rarer than helians were helians that could reach that status, for while they were the great fire of suns, it was uncommon that they ever became one themselves. after all, there was nothing in the compound for seonghwa to feed off of, other than stagnancy and the occasional wicked burst of cruelty from greyjackets that grew bored. but hongjoong was already shaking his head; no, suns didn’t have to be strong. just bright, and beautiful, and a means to live.

seonghwa was all three.

( gods, he was the only fucking thing worth saving. )

“you’re the sun,” he repeated, and seonghwa had no choice but to accept, because hongjoong had that look in his eyes— the one that made him look like a lion. a king that sat on a throne of ash and sweat. “you were born to rise, and we’ll meet again— so i’ll see you later, seonghwa. in the skies, where you belong.”

the first night hongjoong spent alone in that cot he was reminded of the way he felt, smudged in dirt after chasing the streets in search of a father no longer within reach. he curled up and made himself small against the wide berth of space seonghwa left, lost again with a golden pendant that couldn’t glow on its own, and feared to himself that his sun would rise without him.

but fate liked to watch things unfold. she liked to intervene, and pioneer. what is that they’ve said about her? that fate lead the willing and dragged the reluctant?

kim hongjoong was no different, weeks later, as he shouldered a folded sail and trudged with a heavy chest down the docks to return it for repairs. the ships in port were always well kept; the system liked things in tip-top shape. efficient.

he was last to come back in, as he’d been lately. as if he were always waiting for something. as if he expected seonghwa to barrel into him from behind, arm draped over his shoulders. _what are you walking so slow for? is it ‘cause your legs are so damn short?_ he’d probably say. hongjoong could hear it if he stopped listening to the sound of silence instead.

yes, fate was a hungry thing; she dropped the unexpected in one’s lap. and so, true to her nature, did she burst onto the scene, crashing into port. the collision was deafening, and it shook hongjoong off his feet as the sailpack tipped from his shoulders and unraveled some few paces away. he scrabbled on the ground, twisting around to look. “gods, what is—”

but his breath snagged in his throat, busy and clawing for air, stifled under the grandeur of the ship behind him. above him. it was massive. bigger than the mining rigs he was training on. it was as big as it was gorgeous, and it stared him down. hongjoong was surprised it didn’t spit on him for the way it put him on his back, and the sheer size of the bow alone blocked out the light of the moon and cast him in shadow.

he couldn’t bring himself to move, even as a man jumped over the railing and staggered down the docks, kicking up sand as he went. he was clad in rags, not riches— surprising, given the stature of the vessel that brought him here— and the closer he got the sooner hongjoong realized he was dripping blood down his path. it was difficult to see, and more difficult to comprehend what was happening, but even with handsome features sharpened by age and experience, did hongjoong come to recognize who this person was.

it was his father.

“you—”

“no, hongjoong, i— i’m sorry, there’s no time. i’ve used all that up, now. can’t explain. but my ship— she _needs_ a captain, and i know you’ve grown up so well, even without me.” his father spoke like this was already a memory. rushed, fleeting. blood spilled from the corner of his lips, dripped down his chin. “i know it’s been hard, but please listen to me—” hongjoong only stared—

in horror? shock? somewhere between the two.

“fa—”

“hongjoong, i’m dying, and _she needs a captain_.” his father pressed something into hongoong’s palm. a box, lined in metal and wood. it was beautiful, in the passing glance the boy spared it. “fly that ship like it’s the last thing you’ll do— because the moment you step foot on board, it will be.” his father heaved then, words at war with the rush of collapse that forged its way through his lungs.

“that compass points to death. don’t you ever let it catch you.”

“no, father, i— i can’t—” but it was too late to protest. the man was limp, cloud paint dirtying his cheeks at hongjoong’s knees. he stared into the vastness of the sky and saw nothing.

somehow, hongjoong knew; he had moments to decide. he was at the mercy of the stars either way, but it would be under the will of the greyjackets, or his own— and that choice was the easiest he’d made in a long time. he didn’t mourn. he didn’t cry. the cold punch of meeting his father again didn’t hit him the way he thought it would, but perhaps it was better that it glanced off his sides and let him keep going.

his veins only churned with urgency. there was yelling in the distance, likely members of his unit and the greyjackets that had taken notice of his father’s ship all but crushing the docks with its arrival. if he didn’t go now, it was more likely than not he’d be accused of piracy before even having the chance to try.

he picked himself off the ground and didn’t look back.

the ship - the 1117, he noted - was even more impressive once he was on board. it was lined in constellations, engraved in dotted star clusters and faraway planets hongjoong could only name because the information’s been pounded into his brain with the crack of a whip. they spiraled up the masts, danced across the deck, and hongjoong— _oh,_ _fuck_ , he thinks, head pounding under a sharp kick of excruciating pain that put him on his knees before he could take another step.

“wait!”

hongjoong could barely register footsteps thundering his way as he writhed on the deck beneath a pair of large hands gripping his shoulders— they shook him. agony lacerated his skin and fought its way into his blood as if it were trying to split him at the seams; he couldn’t even bring himself to speak. the hands disappeared, and the ship lurched some time after. he was in the air, he knew that much. going where, with who, that was another mystery.

blearily, he looked down at his hands, his arms. the same constellations that strung about the ship’s hull were burning their way across his body as if he were the sky reborn. orion, the hunter, wound about his left wrist. andromeda sank her teeth into his throat, libra dug into his calves, one scale each. it all gathered at the center of his chest when the north star found a new home; he could only see it after tearing his shirt open, stark where it nestled and settled into his sternum. “fuck,” he heaved, dryly, and could only hazily feel someone struggling to hold him against the tilt of the ship.

“fuck, it—. fuck, _it hurts_.” the pain was electric, all-encompassing. try as he did to detach himself from it, the ship pulled him back in and submerged him in its waters, kept him there. it claimed and renamed him, for he was no longer a boy, but a captain. captain kim hongjoong, of the 1117. his rebranding was never-ending. eternities came to pass, mountains collapsed, oceans dried, all in the time it took hongjoong’s head to clear. for the blistering torture to subside into a hot sting, into a dull ache, and then into nothing.

he could roll over, finally, inhale his surroundings and stumble into his new place in the world.

his gaze landed upon a boy. taller than him, lanky. not a greyjacket, he noted— noted instead that a slave tattoo, simple numerics, was crudely inked against his inner wrist. it was because of that tattoo that hongjoong knew he could trust him.

“i’m yunho,” the boy, yunho, speaks, hastily before hongjoong could ask. he scrubbed absently at his slave brand, like it burned to keep it there. “i’m sorry, i— saw you, well. i was already on the docks. but i saw you, and i saw this ship, and i knew i had to be on board. better than that place.” yunho glanced away.

hongjoong only knew how to stare; his silence, in part, was relief. he was embarking on this alone, but at least he wouldn’t be lonely.

“i can pilot,” yunho continued, quickly, as if to make a case for himself. hongjoong looked up. the masts were carving signatures into the underbellies of clouds, and that was decidedly the second of the most beautiful things he'd ever seen.

( the first was heart shaped lips and the eyes of a dragon, whose veins ran hot with fire. )

“i can see that.” it certainly wasn’t hongjoong himself that launched them off the docks, not while the ship made its mark on him. hongjoong was a leader, but not a pilot. he was trained to see the big picture, good at making calls, to shoulder the hard decisions. a stretch of silence. “hongjoong. kim.” he’d continued, and the name tasted like he’d never spoken it before.

“captain.”

“...yes.”

“please tell me we’re not going back— that i’m not going back— they killed my sister and made me a sla—”

“stop,” hongjoong cut him off. “we’re not going back.”

“then where are we going?”

“i don’t know,” the new captain admitted. “somewhere. wherever. maybe nowhere at all. but anywhere’s better than there.” and he received a hum of agreement at that. approval— and for the first time in a long time hongjoong felt like he’d done something right. he dusted himself off, the stiff press of his uniform releasing subtle clouds of starch.

“do you think they’ll follow us?” but hongjoong was already shaking his head; if the greyjackets bothered giving chase, they’d have been caught already— though something told him the sheer size and pace of the ship had something to do with their apathy, blurring reality at the edges a little as it carved through the sky. camps were equipped for self-defense, but pirates rarely bothered with them. it was the conversion warehouses and hospitals they went after. marketplaces. massive homes. “they’d have caught us by now. at most, they lost a slave, and a trainee. we’re not worth wasting stars for.”

that was almost laughable. maybe he’d make the greyjackets regret that someday; letting him get away.

but that would be for another time. it was late, and the adrenaline was beginning to wear off. the system kept them in shape, and in the same vein it aimed to keep them busy. exhaustion lingered for a bad day, and this was a quiet night - there was a point in time where those became synonymous with one another - so he could feel it, climbing over his bones and weighing them down as if his fatigue could sink the ship right from the sky.

the captain’s quarters were as foreign as they were familiar. like coming home after a long trip. his father hadn’t changed; the room was kept simply, bare and impersonal. there were no pictures, or paintings, only a single orchid struggled to live in the corner. stacks of books lined the windowsills, but none of them would prove any use; hongjoong couldn’t read anything but numbers, and he doubted yunho could, either.

the bed was still unmade, and that made it easier for hongjoong to fall into it, inhaling the scent of anise and faraway fairytales with neither end nor beginning.

he didn’t dream that night.

couldn’t, rather.

see, the ship ran on them— on dreams. she was a vessel of the captain, and the captain was a vessel of his crew.

the crew spoke, the captain listened, and gave the orders; but he would never whim and wish on his own, for if he followed his heart, it might lead him off the ship and that was simply out of the question.

so the journey started there, on the downbeat of an exhalation,

and not with a dream, but with an outcry for freedom and all the things that still kept their will to survive.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hella unedited. withdrawal symptoms ++ explicit content in this chapter.

“it’s a merchant ship. greyjackets.”

yeosang’s at hongjoong’s side, just behind. his past lies draped in the chains of the slave trade but he wears it all like armor, like a library. he’s been on more than a few ships; silent where it counted, but never deaf, and never blind. it proves useful at times like this to give them the upper hand on tactics. numbers. patterns. who’s worth the effort, and when to flee, if need be.

that, and he’s the only one on board that knows how to read anything more than numbers—

but that’s beside the point.

he fills in the blanks and has an old soul way of looking at things. those of his kind, asterians, are objective like that. intelligent, dynamic. of opalescent skin and bodies outside the boxes of gender, born between the earth and the sky and unable to lie just like the stars themselves.

at times like this, though, with hongjoong’s history scathingly fresh before him, his memory supplies all he needs to know. he thinks about the way they’d thrown his covers off in the night and took him from his home. about them holding coals to the soles of his feet to make him squeal. the whips. the dust. the thickets. the meager dinners, the stolen youth. none of these men are worth bothering to spare.

it was the other ship that fired first, unprovoked, their canons ribboning the air with technicolor thunderstorms on the hunt for glory. it razed the rails at the helm to splinterfilth, and threw yunho on his ass, nothing more. hongjoong wasn’t looking for a fight, but trouble likes to collect in quiet places, and unluckily for their new acquaintances, his quiet place was volatile at best.

“yes,” hongjoong sneers. “greyjackets.” with the grin of a snake his lips are stretched wide, baring his teeth more than he smiles. “they drew first blood; we kill them all.”

hongjoong’s crew is only five. it is not enough for the size of their ship, compared to a typical crew, but it’s all he has right now, and they make do. it's him, yunho, yeosang, mingi, and jongho, whom they’d found burrowed beneath a pile of tarps and a chest of medical supplies on the first night.

the 1117 is a member in itself as well; simply massive, and yunho was true to his word when he said he could sail, because it moves like an extension of his whims, defying expectations the way weeds still grow through pavement. it roars, if one listens close enough, and it rips open the sky, fueled by the fragments of love letters sent home— wherever the hell that even is anymore.

in a lawless place like the sky, it still amazes hongjoong - in the worst way - the efforts the system goes through to try and tame it; it was idiotically foolish of a mechant ship of all things, to try ruining his day. cargo over crew, that was all they were. small and heavy. anyone that fought, they took care of. yeosang was not a killer; many asterians had gentle temperament, and he was one of them. but the rest of the crew held their own and made gravestones of men. they dug in and followed through, slashing skin and slipping over the spillage of red ruin. they bore new gashes and bruises and pressed on brutal aches because it made them feel alive, and feeling alive was better than playing dead.

a pitiful crew of greyjackets is gathered at the broken helm of the 1117, awaiting whichever death their five gods pleased. all lined up in a row and kneeling with their heads bowed— fuck, it’s the most satisfying thing hongjoong’s ever seen. he’s never felt more kingly than he does now.

“you are all so.. _pathetic_.” the captain spits. it lands on someone’s face. he giggles, and wipes his blade on their shirt too, for good measure. he hopes it makes them regret crossing his path— just because he told himself once, when he first boarded this ship, that he would.

the first execution is slow, tasting their death as if his sword were of his tongue. drawn slowly across their throat, driven through their gut, sawing out their intestines. the color of his jumpsuit deserves this, just like the next and the next and the next, all terrible stains of grey in an already lackluster world.

hongjoong wore bloodstains the way fieldhands wore freckles; the way the night wore constellations. dotted about, for beauty and fury liked to glitter the same when spoken from the lips of a non-believer.

he’s developed a fascination with killing over time, drawn in by a sense of catharsis. his helplessness from younger years bleeds into it a bit— as if this was his way of forcing the world to repay him for the things he’d lost. beautifully dirty all around, it puts him in a headspace that drifts so far from the physical realm that he only notices yeosang screaming for him to stop when the boy’s nails claw into his arm, shredding the skin at his inner elbow.

he snarls, hands still gripping the scalp of the man slumped at his feet. “ _what the fuck_?”

“don’t— i know them,” yeosang whisper, low but urgent, lips pressed to hongjoong’s ear. his fingertips run along hongjoong’s arm to soothe the sting while he directs hongjoong’s gaze down the line, pointing out two men. a greyjacket in chains, and another with the star-glitter of asterian skin. they cling to one another. hongjoong would have killed them both without a second thought.

the asterian he doesn’t mind sparing, if only for yeosang’s sake, but he bristles. hongjoong doesn’t save greyjackets.

yeosang knows this, and is already speaking again. “i know the ship. i know them. they helped me when i needed it— _please_ , if they overstep you can do whatever you want, but spare them for now, at least. i owe them.”

hongjoong stares deep into his waters.

the younger boy doesn’t owe anyone anything; he remembers the day he came aboard.

they were in a marketplace down on the mainland, somewhere in asia. medicine was in high demand and low supply, rations were meager, and it was time to dock.

hongjoong was back on the ship. he and yunho learned early on that it was better off that way, as much as he detested to stay behind. perhaps it was that the ship branded him in star maps and called him captain, the way no other ship could, but the moment his feet touched land it aimed to swallow him back down into it. he’d have minutes before the earth dug its teeth into his ankles and snagged him, trapped him, held him down. so because they had no choice, it was just the three of them; yunho, mingi, and jongho.

yunho had seen him first, meek and small, wrists bound. his left eye was kissed in something dark red, as if his temple was stained in cherry juice. it was a flaw, objectively, but a beautiful one. there were no slave brands, but he didn’t need them. it was shameful, but not a surprise, that asterians were popular in the slave industry. they had voices that begged like the breeze on a summer night, had soft bodies of small cocks and pretty cunts.

he didn’t even know he was listening until the words gathered his attention. “...should put you in your place right here.” yunho’s brows furrowed, unconsciously shifting on his feet as he strained to hear better. “...—na be a little thief again? see where it gets you.”

_thief._

it opened something in him. his blood turned to crystal and glassed up his veins, for there was a time in which he was a slave once, too. when he was the brother of a sick little girl, and the son of a couple that stole for the best of her. when he was too young to know what a mercy killing really meant, and when they all paid their weight in chains because love liked to tear people apart whether it meant to or not.

yunho’s heartbeat thundered in his ears. it thrashed about and drowned him in memories of a family that used to kiss him goodnight. he grabbed mingi’s arm.

“this is a bad idea,” yunho started, but if there was anyone that knew how to make a bad idea into a good story, it was mingi; they worked like partners in crime sometimes, much to the dismay of their crewmates. ( and the rest of the world, when given the chance. ) “if we don’t save that boy over there i’m gonna fucking lose it.”

“i— yunho, what?”

the thing about pirates is that they liked to mind their business. other ships under siege? not their problem. other crews scammed and slain? not their problem. star-folk bred and raised to be slaves? not their problem. a favor dealt was a favor owed, after all, and pirates weren’t particular to that notion; to the prospect of owing anyone anything.

yeah, they kept their noses where they chose to keep their noses.

it was a law of the sky, unwritten. there were lots of those.

yunho pointed him out: the boy staggering behind taller, stronger forms. they were dressed well, their slave was not. he was a fucking bug amongst monarchs, smudged in dirt that stifled his iridscence. mingi regarded him strangely, because the whole thing reeked of trouble. the crew knew of yunho’s past— it wasn’t like the slave markings on his wrist were a secret, though he wrapped them up often, when he could. when the sight of them bothered him.

but still, there was that unspoken law.

and all the slaves they’ve passed by, before.

“what’s so special about him? i mean, i don’t get why—”

“we just have to, okay? please.”

mingi looked at him. stared, as if he could dig his way from the eyes into the soul. they said the eyes were a window to that very place, but nothing in life was ever that straightforward. yunho’s eyes were wide and shining, and mingi could read old scars unstitching themselves back into fresh wounds, but that was all. “ _please_ , mingi.” nights and days came and went before mingi pursed his lips and gave a short, curt nod. “okay.”

it went easier than they thought it would. jongho was in on it after a quick word from mingi. he didn’t speak; never has. but he nodded in understanding and followed; he was the most reliable out of all of them, in that way. silently took care of them better than they knew how to take care of themselves. he was the reign of old mythologies in a boy, eternal as mountainsides and wise winds. sometimes he felt older than the ship itself.

he was the strongest amongst them, as well, and hoisted the slave boy’s weight over his shoulder as if his clothes were empty of the body within them. they stole him, chains and all, swift and messy, yunho and mingi coming together like a blockade to close them from view. they knew each other well enough and moved like a machine. bullets grazed yunho’s cheek and dared him to go a little faster, just before he threw himself aboard and cut the ship free of the docks.

hongjoong remembers the way yeosang would shy away from them all, even days after his rescue. how the crew would wake to the sound of his screaming because it clawed through the air and dragged them from their beds.

how hongjoong would throw open the door to his chambers and find the boy locked into battle with an invisible assailant, fragments of lightning crackling through his skin and it was then that hongjoong would recognize the symptoms of withdrawal.

see, along with the new world and its new virtues, came new vices.

there were asterians, born afloat beneath the stars;

helians, with hearts forged of the sun’s golden rage;

and then there were the fengarit, a race with blood so black it stained like the shadows themselves.

they were wild things. they were night. darkness had a way of making it difficult to see, or to feel; it stifled the senses and gave a cause to question, so while helians were ignition, the fengarit were the end. the snuffing; smoke, and ash. they made lapdogs of thunderstorms and wore their sins like badges of honor, waging wars on the sky, in it, with it, all at the same time. in simplicity, their strength was unmatched, and that was their most notable trait— that they were nearly unkillable.

nearly.

to kill a fengarit, target their spirit; target their souls. target the parts of them that long for memories clutched on strips of film. find the safe place they carry their dead, because the fengarit had a penchant for belonging, and the subtle art of falling into place. they were rare creatures. it was difficult to find one, and even harder to find one another, and even harder still to build what they called family. so drag their love through the dirt, tar and feather their pride, drink their sighs with the mighty roar of a laugh and spit their sorrow back down their throats.

do not bother to make them bleed; make them cry, instead.

ah, yes— make them cry.

the price of their tears is _unmatched._

it was a new drug on the market. the fengarit cried little pills of lightning, and if lightning pills couldn’t make one feel like a god, nothing would. they silenced fear, and the perception of death. whispered psychedelic daydreams against the skin and soothed away all agony. pop a pill for fun, for a grey day, for a gunshot wound— oh yes, they suited every occasion, and every occasion suited them.

life was beautiful, when high on lightning, and so the fengarit were stamped out of existence at the hands of addicts and cruel men that knew no one could resist a fix.

cruel men like yeosang’s former captors, so it seemed. hongjoong had ordered everyone else back to their quarters. yeosang was not well, they could all see that, and they shrank the room so much he’d choke.

lightning was a drug that censored the dark, and it did its job well— until it began to cycle out of the system. withdrawal was damaging. hallucinations. sensitivity to light. thunder rolling off the skin. dreams so achingly sad they gathered every man’s hardest moments and cast them upon him at once, burdensome like a wet blanket.

yeosang endured it all, for days. screamed sickening things in hongjoong’s ear. thrashed so wildly in his arms hongjoong had to call jongho from his post to help hold him down, pin him to his bed and keep him from flaying muscle from bone with his nails until the fit was over. he’d fall asleep slumped against hongjoong’s chest, and the captain would use that chance to steal sleep himself until yeosang woke and they began again.

one particularly terrible night, yeosang was choking on his breath when mingi chose the wrong time to walk in. he had a way of lumbering about; tall, like yunho, but lanky and awkward with his weight. his shoulder bumped the doorframe on the way in, and perhaps that is why yeosang reacted the way he did.

with speed that contradicted his past few weeks of weakness, he’d snatched hongjoong’s shotgun off the bedside table and leveled mingi with it. in retrospect, hongjoong still blames himself for leaving it within reach. yeosang saw his captors, maybe, in mingi’s looming frame, prompting him to crowd mingi out of the room and onto the deck— towards the plank, where the taller was balanced precariously on top of by the time jongho burst out from his quarters and realized what was happening.

the youngest of them all bore no hesitation and raised a pistol to the back of yeosang’s head himself. only hongjoong, barking orders jongho would never defy, saved them all from going a man (or more) short.

yeosang’s guilt was written as clearly across his face as the constellations burned into hongjoong’s skin.

“i’m s—. sssssorry,” he’d gasped, after making himself small in the captain’s lap.

“don’t apologize to me for this, yeosang—”

“fix it. fix it, captain, please, _fix_ it— fix me.” the heel of yeosang’s palm pressed shamelessly between hongjoong’s legs just as the elder parted his lips to protest. he’d sucked in a sharp breath, through his teeth. it sounded a little like a hiss and a lot like a damnation.

“no, i can’t— not tonight. you aren’t clear in the head.”

“please, captain.” there was a keen in his ear, softened beneath an exhale. yeosang shifted around, messily, and straddled one of hongjoong’s thighs, pressed hot and delicious against his leather breeches. it only took one, two, a few more rocks of hips that knew what they were doing. a steady mantra of ‘please, please, please,’s streaming through hongjoong’s ears like the sun kissing the horizon before his resolve cracked and bled; he couldn’t resist a pretty boy soft and begging for cock in his lap any more than the next man.

yeosang was taller than him, but pliant. pliant enough for hongjoong to flip their bodies over and claw their clothes away; ripping off only what was necessary to get what he wanted. threads snapped under careless fingers, buttons clattered across the floorboards, skin bruised under harsh palms. yeosang was wet, slicked up between the legs and smelling of heat.

“is this for me?” hongjoong had asked, dragging two fingers through the folds of yeosang’s cunt, knuckles strung about in the boy’s arousal. he held them up for yeosang to see and whine in embarrassment at the sheen coating hongjoong’s fingers; lit up with the moon filtering through his gauzy drapes. his cock was pretty too, small and useless where it lay against his belly.

yeosang wanted this, needed this; needed to re-claim the part of him that was leashed to a bed and stuffed with pills. needed to be fixed, yes— needed to open up to someone that gave a damn, for once.

so hongjoong opened him up from the inside out. slowly, at first, then all at once. one finger, curled within, testing the waters. another, and quickly another, and then he stretched him with his cock to unstitch him properly for the sole purpose of putting him back together— putting him back together right, as it were. he pressed kisses like bandages over all scars thin and white or jagged and ugly. he rocked his hips and moved like a slow burn until yeosang was crying, and then he bent him in half and fucked him so hard his eyes crossed, like a distant cosmic collision.

mingi was a bit weary around him after that. no one noticed amongst the hushing of demons— maybe not even mingi himself. still, that was stitches for another day, because for the first time in the weeks since yeosang was brought aboard their ship, he sat down to dinner with the rest of them. they didn’t eat together often— in fact, they, collectively, forgot to eat more than they should - but when an opportunity made itself apparent they took it, gathered around a dining table that was much too grand for a crew their size.

this is what it means, to board a ship that runs not on the dreams of its captain, but of its crew. hongjoong’s grown a soft spot for yeosang, after the boy found his way back home from the eye of a hurricane within the safety of his captain’s arms. so when yeosang begs him to stop, for those two boys, hongjoong - although a bit reluctantly - concedes, and steps away.

their names are san and wooyoung. ‘just san’, rather, and jung wooyoung of the twelfth division. the pair hung over one another as if they came from the womb undivided. it was strange to see; an asterian, likely a former slave himself, and a young greyjacket, who was probably just a privileged cabin boy, so attached to each other. hongjoong doesn’t question it, though. whoever said family couldn’t be chosen was full of shit.

they’re offered food, but they decline, so instead, they’re shown to their quarters. there are a lot of empty cabins, to which yeosang has taken the liberty of filling with books and trinkets; enamored by things that shine.

san seems most enthralled with the prospect of a bed to sleep on, while wooyoung looks relieved to be alive, more than anything. he’d dared a glance at hongjoong before they went below the deck; one that read as gratitude and submission in one. he suits his new surroundings better than anyone thought he would, shedding the drab jumpsuit of his old life as soon as he gets the chance.

easy with new people and ever playful, mingi seems to have taken a liking to them both, pelting them with his curiosity until yunho dragged him away by the ear to leave them both to their own devices.

night has fallen by the time fate pulls the curtains closed, and the two boys climb back upstairs in the safety of the dark.

san gives wooyoung a long, long look. one that pulls lifetimes out of seconds; eternities from minutes. puts midnight into morning and dawn into dusk, why— his eyes alone are little supernovas of their own, and wooyoung wanders far and wide within them. it’s funny, sometimes, how much can change in a single day. without breaking their silence, he throws an arm around san’s shoulders - the other lacing their fingers together - and they begin to dance, celebrating home to what they realize now is the sound of freedom.

wooyoung glances up.

the sky is large, and black. he could fall up into it if he isn’t careful, and if san weren’t here to tether him down, he might.

“it’s kind of amazing how much nothing there is.”

san hums, lets wooyoung dip his back over the railing. his lashes drip with trust. “and yet in this sea of nothing, many somethings have come to be.”

distracted by the soft sweep of footsteps, tracing old symphonies and lost compositions rotted away with time, yeosang finds them like that, unable to sleep. he never learned to dance, however, so he waits by the stairwell at the helm and wordlessly asks them to notice him.

it takes a long, long moment —

but they notice him, they do.

certain things belong in threes; like the count of a waltz, or the stars on orion’s belt, or the three of them now, while they teach yeosang how to slot himself against their bodies and understand the beauty of dancing to a song no one else can hear. it’s quiet and simple until wooyoung speaks up, writing their truths into the night. “to be honest,” wooyoung says, as his fingertip traces the gentle curve of yeosang’s cheek. it rounds out soft, unlike san’s, but it swallows down his heart the same; asterian skin was his favorite, and he smooths his finger across it as if he could collect the moondust lighting it up from within. “san and i always thought you were pretty. we wouldn’t touch you like that back then, though. wasn’t right.”

yeosang knows. they always said so, back when he was sold onto the ship of division twelve. the sweet nothings they patched his emptiness with were the only things he woke for, when they’d find him spent and used like a broken toy outside someone’s door. when they carried him back to his quarters and rag-bathed him as clean as they could get someone like him. clean enough to see his stars again.

“we still think you’re pretty,” san adds, from somewhere behind his ear, pressed chest-to-back flush against yeosang’s frame. the night is cool, their bodies are warm, and something about this feels a little like puzzle pieces slotting together. like locks fitting into keys. dotted i’s, crossed t’s. “let us touch you the way you were meant to be touched.”

they move to yeosang’s quarters as if they are floating.

san pulls the other asterian over his chest, bodies draped across the bed while wooyoung works the most of their clothes away; exposes marks of old whippings and scars that exhale heartsighs and secrets all folded up in their legs when they tangle them together.

yeosang is noisy— but that’s nothing wooyoung can’t fix by shifting up the bed and kneeling beside the pillows, feeding him his cock and stuffing silence into his slurry speech. san scissors him open with two fingers and whispers out those sweet nothings he loves so much, lets yeosang writhe around on his lap— but not for long. his voice is heaven, his hands are the devil, and they pin yeosang’s hips in place to make him take cock rather than sit on it, basking in the hot wet warmth of yeosang’s cunt before he moves.

yeosang is messy— but they like it that way. it’s rewarding to watch drool gather at the corners of his mouth, wooyoung’s cockhead dipping down his throat. yeosang scrabbles dumbly for anything to clutch onto and leaves trails of wildfire in the wake of his nails across wooyoung’s thighs, san’s chest. he has to be held together while he’s pulled apart and that’s the fun of it because he’s lovely when he cries, blissed out and drunk on cock.

yeosang is needy— but they need him too, evident in the way san spears him open and fucks up into him, punching out deep whines and gasping pleas. wooyoung’s fingers anchor in his hair and set up camp there, in his downy blonde locks that fall across his brow and slick with sweat to his temples.

still, above all,

yeosang is theirs— and they are his. they’ve split open their ribcages and give him somewhere to call his own. custom-cut for his size, so he suits it well, and things feel right when wooyoung cums down his throat with a hand on his nape. when san fills him to the brim. when they keep pushing him, closer to the edge of the world than he’s ever been, and he climaxes with an air of finality and a rush of breath by the time wooyoung finally lets him go.

they fall asleep like that, in a trio of dreams,

while somewhere on the upper levels, their captain remains awake. 

he doesn’t know what goes on below him, per se, but the ship pulsates with the influx of new whims and wills. it thrives and surges under new minds collected aboard; he can feel it patching itself into a cathedral made of crossroads and bandages.

hongjoong’s window is open. it always is. ever since he boarded the ship he’s never been particular to sleep. it was dreamless, but not lacking of feeling, and when he closes his eyes he’s greeted by a vast timeless continuum of absolutely nothing at all; so he likes to put it off. he likes to sit against the headboard with the wind in his hair, to pretend he can fly before he gives in.

the last time they stopped to trade, he’d asked jongho for a package of sparklers, ignoring the questioning look it got him before paying in secrets for another day. fireworks were hard to find, but easy to barter for. it’s been awhile since hongjoong’s had a solemn moment to himself— but even longer still, since he’s last seen the boy that grew fireblooms in his palms and licked his scars away. so he strikes a match and holds the sparkler out the window; leaves a trail of sunglitter in the ship's wake, as an ode to falling stars and rising suns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not @ how hard this comeback is gonna slap mmm atz the only fedoras with rights


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i revised this.... sort of tipsy lol good luck. also, not @ me having to google pirate stuff every five seconds? anyways

“i can fix that, y’know.”

hongjoong whips around, his coat billowing in the wind, to see wooyoung standing behind him. the other gestures to the splintered railing destroyed from the day he and san came aboard. a good stretch of it is gone; the cannons ate away at the floorboards there, too, leaving them blown out and ruined. if hongjoong inhales long and deep enough, he can still taste the metallic twinge of blood on the wind.

but he cocks a brow in interest because he’d been debating on what to do about it. own up to the trade and hire a carpenter the next time they docked, maybe. none of them are good with their hands like that, so if wooyoung’s offering, he won’t decline.

“would you?”

“long as i got what i need,” wooyoung shrugs. he fills out leather well— better than that starchy uniform, creased into perfection and drab monotony. yes, he looks good in the material stretched over his chest and buckled into place. rouge is smudged across his eyelids too, smoking them out in hellfire. that’s not where rouge goes, if hongjoong recalls correctly, but that’s what's pretty about it.

“there’s tools in the hold. lumber, too. take what you want. go find jongho for an extra hand, if you need it.”

“aye.” and he’s flashed a toothy grin, before the boy disappears below the deck, presumably to go harass the youngest into helping. sometimes hongjoong forgets how young they all are, caught up in places that drown the naive. even wooyoung’s youth was stolen from him— he doesn’t know much about wooyoung's childhood, or what it was like to be born on the other side of the fence, but if he knows anything about the greyjackets, it’s that they like to make boys grow up too fast.

wooyoung returns minutes later. jongho is in tow, while san trails just behind to join hongjoong where he leans against the foremast, and they watch the others work for a moment. wooyoung talks enough for both the younger boy and himself; animated and excitable. it’s a feat to translate his rambling sometimes, and hongjoong can see why he and san match together so well.

one hums like static, the other finds words to make sense of it.

“if you don’t mind me asking,” san’s features are feline, cold cut razorblades edged in fine diamond dust. he’s the first asterian hongjoong’s met that still holds an air of mystery even with his inability to lie, voice a black cherry purr. he seems to embody the stories the stars tell, more than the pictures they paint. “why doesn’t the one speak?”

hongjoong shrugs. he’s never had reason to ask, and he isn't certain jongho would answer him if he did. “we found him—... that way.”

at san’s questioning glance, he continues.

“the ship was my father’s. i was in a camp, before. he left it to me when he was dying— so i'd have gone to the skies one way or another, i just thought it best to make the choice myself. he left this to me, too.” hongjoong unhooks the compass from his belt, hanging faithfully against his thigh. it’s branded in the same moonsilver patterns as the ship and his skin, as if they are all pieces of the same set.

the needle points ahead. off to the left a little, but ahead nevertheless, which is where hongjoong prefers it.

“it doesn’t point north,” san notes.

“because it points to death instead.”

the memory of his father's reappearance makes him feel hollow. first he'd left hongjoong for dead, and then returned after years apart to demand that he live. the bitterness might coat his tongue if san wasn't there to distract him, tracing the curve of the asteroid belt across his collarbones with one fingernail.

"then do you chase death, or run from it?"

"i only keep it in front of me, so it can't take me by surprise."

"as expected."

"expected?"

“i've seen something within you, captain. stronger than earth. wide as the sea.” san’s gaze flickers up to meet his own.

he phrases things oddly like that, sometimes. abstract, and in poetry, as if the stars seek his tongue for a means of translation. maybe they do; maybe he listens now, to the supernovas themselves. “i can’t name it, but i can hear it. those of night speak one language.”

“...what’s that supposed to mean?”

“often times, the things closest to us are the hardest to see. likewise,” san’s fingernail digs into his skin then, drawing a hiss from the captain through clenched teeth as beads of crimson well up past the surface. “the things inside us cannot be found until we stop looking.”

san leans in close to lick the blood away, hongjoong too keyed up to move. he only stares, mirroring the questioning look he’d received earlier, but he doesn’t get any more elaboration than that. instead, san slinks away, out of sight. he's taken to wearing clothing that clings to his form and announces that very figure, accentuating the way he moves; like a panther.

even after san is gone, the captain remains more distracted by his comments than he’d care to admit, luring him to pace about the deck. words wind around in his brain and muddle things, reaping the clarity he’s spent a lot of time finding. their conversation is bridging him back into his past— not something he’d actively try to cover, but something he never gave the chance to rise.

he thinks about the dead orchids on the windowsill. the height of the blaze that took them back into the dirt and called him an orphan. he thinks about seonghwa, and who he'd be if they weren't wedged apart. he thinks about secrets, and the way they all have them. 

there's no reason for him to feel like this, is there? none of them had much a life to be proud of. yunho and san were slaves, yeosang was drugged and used for sex. mingi was forced to the plank by his former crew, jongho left behind and found hidden beneath tapestries whose stories have rotted off. even wooyoung, a former greyjacket, lived under a thumb whether he knew it or not. why pity himself?

his lips flatten into a line. the sun sets while he dwells too long and too hard, tracing the silver paths adorning the foremast as if to remind him he's still here.

he usually keeps his thoughts to the safety of his bed ( old habits die hard ) so it doesn’t surprise him at all, when jongho approaches him later.

the time jongho saves from words, he spends on his eyes; on perception. on reading little notes of dissonance swept up under the rug, tangled thoughts on the last train home— and then he takes care of it, because jongho is like time; unmovable, but all-moving.

hongjoong lets jongho crowd him back down the steps, back into his quarters, back into his bed. he does this sometimes, when it’s clear hongjoong's drifting too far within his own head. he does things for the others, too, but this is how he's learned to hush the roar of the captain's mind. hongjoong's clothed in layers, so it takes jongho several moments to undress him fully.

he unbuckles hongjoong’s belt first, discards it. it’s the heaviest thing hongjoong wears; it bears his weaponry, his direction, and his sense of purpose. then goes the jacket, old suede, thick with pride and promise. his shirt is unbuttoned next; it floats like a feather when tossed. his boots, unlaced. breeches, peeled away. layer by layer of brick and mortar and ice and theater masks until all that’s left is his captain’s small frame beneath him. pale, gorgeous, and laced in constellations. he’s weightless without his clothes, quiet and drifting, like the ship itself when it sails them to sleep.

the younger passes over everything but never lingers, the way morning glories roll in over the cities. he's everywhere and nowhere at once, tweaking hongjoong’s nipples to make him gasp. he covers hongjoong's body with his own to make him feel small; doesn’t kiss the north star at the center of his chest, but traces it with his tongue instead. a calculated touch is jongho’s brand of affection and it shows on hongjoong's kiss-bitten throat, painting stars in galaxy colors to turn him into the sky he belongs to.

two fingers are shoved past hongjoong’s lips, pressed against his tongue to gather spit between the knuckles, while his other hand throws open the drawers of the nightstand and searches for lube. he's efficient. jongho knows just how to work him up: with firm hands. swift, commanding.

sometimes those in charge need to let go, too.

after only a short moment of teasing his rim, he spreads hongjoong open on one finger, a second, a third. jongho adds them quickly to maintain the burn because the blunt pain sets hongjoong’s skin on fire and makes him squirm, muscles flexing under his skin with the tension that rolls off of him in waves.

_stop thinking_. jongho doesn’t say it, but he wills it, makes it happen. he drags hongjoong in by the hips with a grip that threatens to bruise. he pins the captain down with his cock and fucks into him in long strokes met with gasping pleas, washing away when he wraps his palm around hongjoong's throat and watches the elder's lashes flicker. hongjoong claws at the sheets, the headboard, drags his nails down jongho's chest and back. he's soaked in want, precum smeared across his belly, all rambling and brainless and hot and full; "please, please, more, i need—"

jongho flips him over for a better shot at his prostate, one hand on the nape of his neck to shove his head into the pillow. he knows he's found it when hongjoong cries muffled nocturnes against the pillowcase, mere fragments of words fizzling out as jongho twists his hips and snuffs them off his tongue. red tints from searching teeth soon dress the length of his spine and each thrust is punctuated by slaps rained down on his ass, bared vulnerably with the position jongho's wrestled him into. 

it stings, but jongho serves pain drenched in the heady nectar of poppy blossoms and scalding hands that never settle. jongho's strong— stronger than even the tallest of them. the abuse to his prostate renders hongjoong incoherent as the younger grasps him so tightly his knees lift off the bed, elbows scrambling to support the rest of his weight. he floats, unable to do anything other than take ( and take ) and all that's left are the pieces of him that tremble and chase heaven.

"hn— jongho— i'm close i'm close 'm close—" and jongho holds him to the edge by the throat until his vision clouds over, knuckles white where they clutch the sheets as if they're the last thing anchoring him to his own body. hongjoong spills over his bed untouched, clenching like a vice around jongho's cock until he's spent. he's limp and twitchy but jongho keeps going, hongjoong's ass blooming dusty pink where their hips meet. jongho would be silent even now if not for the heavy pants writing warmth between hongjoong's shoulder blades, his stuttering pace the only giveaway before he pulls out and covers hongjoong's reddened skin in smears of cum.

a few beats pass and jongho lets him down gently, maneuvers his body back into one piece and wipes him clean. hongjoong is asleep— or he will be soon, so jongho folds the clothes he tore away and cracks the window open because he knows the captain sleeps best like that. swift, yes. efficient. jongho doesn't linger.

the door is shut and the ship is silent.

it's nights later, that hongjoong wakes to the way the sky sounds when it's on fire.

it's so concussive it nearly shakes him from his bed, rattling the wall he falls against and pulling the floor from beneath his feet. torn from sleep, he’s sure he looks like a mess, but he swiftly dresses, not bothering to button his shirt— too tedious a task when crackling detonations lacerate the broken silence in the call of angry dieties.

“what the fuck was that,” is the first thing out of his mouth, when he throws open the doors to his quarters. jongho’s already waiting there, expressionless if not for the tension in his jaw. he waves to the starboard side of the ship, and hongjoong marches there with purpose to raze the air with his gaze and catalogue each sway of the breeze. there's a loud pop and a stream of smoke, scalding his retinas just before he turns away. sparks fly in neons spat from the mouths of angels, and gods, _gods_ , hongjoong’s knees get so fucking weak he grips the railing and drags in a breath that doesn’t fill his chest the way it’s supposed to.

they were roman candles; one to a dozen. they were thistles, and golden blood. circus roses in his mother’s garden, blooming beneath his ship. a sundrop pendant forged from a gold watch. a warm embrace below the solemn gaze of the moon. they were the sparklers hidden under his bed, shredded packaging and charcoal stains on his windowsill.

the royal rage of combustion. there's only one boy in this star-ravaged world that meant fireworks to him like that.

“yunho,” he nearly trips over his own feet; the captain’s never let his teeth so much as chatter within ear-shot of his crew, and yunho's surprise lays evident on his face. jongho’s immediately at his side to steady him but he carries forward anyways, clawing his way up the stairs and to the helm. “yunho, get us the fuck down there. jongho, wake the others; we're docking.”

“captain?” but yunho’s already circling back around to the sea of fiery blossoms they’d begun to pass, starting in on their descent. the latter has already left his side to carry out the order while the clouds bid them goodbye. 

_you were born to rise ,_

_and we’ll meet again —_

_so i’ll see you later ,_

_in the skies ;_

_where you belong ._

ports are large. they’re circuit boards in essence, ribboned about with tethers for fuel and places to lace one old city to another. they’re resting grounds; most are neutral spaces, but the greyjackets hook their claws into whatever they can, so there are certain ports to avoid. the one the 1117 heads for now is among them, seeming to open its jaws as they approach. it would've faded into the desert and its simple colors if not for the beacons freckling it, a silver tattoo that brands the earth the same filthy grey as the rest.

they sail through burnt-out sonatas and blister their eardrums in rain of ash; all things that blow up and start over, gathered here upon their tongues. he inhales so deep his lungs want to burst and chokes on the smoke because if angels can eat their halos, then so can he. he's closer to the heavens than the kings beneath his feet and nothing matters to him— nothing more than this.

hongjoong finds a dreadful recognition in those sharp corners, the bland architecture that drives shame into the art of it all and stamps out the color.

yunho passes over the port, the ship’s shadow casting dusk across the grounds below them. he’s an excellent pilot that catches the winds and swallows them down, times his exhales to the downbeat of each glittering combustion. he's greyjacket trained, just like hongjoong, here to weaponize his knowledge because that’s a war of its own.

"what are we— doing, exactly?" yunho swerves to avoid another blazing stream of electricity, though it knocks them all back a step. his teeth are gritted in concentration.

"picking someone up."

"... _who?_ "

hongjoong doesn't answer that. instead, “i’m going down there with you.” he doesn’t look, but feels, rather, the stares boring into his skin. it doesn’t surprise him; they know the risk of their captain coming to land, but so does he, and he’s the only one that knows what they’re looking for. “no questions,” he cuts off the surge of protest. “i’ll explain it all. just load up and get ready— they can see us coming.” 

they pull into port. they've been noticed by the time they dock, but the grounds are amass in sheets of sparks so bright they burn from a distance. a breath of time passes to drop the anchor and throw down the ladders, the others following hongjoong to clear the edge of the docks and make way to the midst of the fireflowers blooming just outside the compound. he can see it all even from the ship; the greyjackets wouldn't kill their prize, but their numbers still eat time, ticking away like the sand that catches in his lashes.

yeosang, not of much use in a firefight, is appointed with reloading the guns while they're away. he's already scaling the steps below deck to get to the gunports when he collides with mingi, the boy he’d held at gunpoint some time ago, halfway down the staircase.

“fuck, oh— yeosang, sorry—” mingi fumbles, scrambling to right the other first, but he withdraws before his hands breach yeosang’s space. it’s rare that they speak, and even rarer that they touch, so the moment is colored strange.

they stare at one another.

now isn’t the time for staring.

“ _mingi! get down here!_ ” and he goes, hastily, skirting around yeosang’s body with as wide a berth as the staircase would allow before joining the crew on the docks.

before mingi came aboard the 1117, he'd sailed with another crew for a long, long time. longer than they deserved of him, but he couldn't find anything else, and they were all he had. pirates were always like that— messy families of lonely people. some worked better than others;

mingi's last crew was the very definition of 'others'.

he doesn't know why they all hung the worth of each other off the edge of the horizon and clawed for a place at the top, nightly. it would have been so much easier to just _function_ , but war was the way things were. he remembers how he slept, clutching a revolver beneath his pillow. they were a tangle of vipers and wolves and tigers and such, too explosive for their own good. cacophony at rest on a good day.

but that's why mingi's so good at what he does, now. he wasn't named the 1117's master gunner by luck, or by chance— no, he’d earned that title himself, with skill and ferocity that matched skin against metal and married the earth to blood. he falls into place here, because it isn’t often that they burn their cause to caution; it isn’t often he gets to be the monster piracy made him.

greyjackets fight like they’re on a ship; stationary, and in hiding. trained well, but best only to kill the things they can’t reach. the sky’s their only opposition, after all, so this is what happens when the sky falls and brings men like mingi along with it. it's as if he's in a trance, articulating every bend of will in staccato bursts, shrapnel on the wind. he drinks it in, steeped in tolling bells.

he’s lured from his haze, though, when a cry calls his attention to san, no longer at his side. the asterian drops to the ground and stains the sand in lost things, clutching blindly at his chest. mingi moves to tend to him but wooyoung beats him to it, hurriedly waving him off. “i got him.” he’s already heaving san into his arms, whose eyes, usually so sharp, fix mingi with an unfocused stare. “you’re a better shot anyways— follow captain kim.”

unseeing to much else, hongjoong finds seonghwa alone.

he’s at the center of a galaxy scaling his weight to their masterplan, huddled there and strung about in filaments of tiger’s eye gleaming beneath his skin.

“seonghwa,” he calls, but he goes unheard. “ _seonghwa_!”

and the boy finally lifts his head; older now, a little worn, but the boy he loved nevertheless. he looks like he aches and gods, he’s so beautiful— even when afraid. hongjoong can barely breathe.

sweat layers itself across their skin the closer they get, sparks dripping from the sky and curling the ends of their hair like candlewicks. yunho beats hongjoong to him and lifts seonghwa from where he sits, the elder looking small against yunho's large frame. mingi closes in behind him, naturally, moving together as clockwork as they begin to return to the ship, proximity burning their clothes at the edges.

hongjoong would follow, but it’s been too long from the moment he stepped onto land. the earth clings to his boots and winds into the laces, licks over his ankles. it draws a gasp off his tongue in surprise; he’d forgotten, upon seeing seonghwa, who he was— or rather, what's allowed of him. _comehomecomehomecomehome_ , the earth speaks, snarls, gnashes its teeth. it wants him, though he’ll never fathom why.

though his shouts were lost in the midst of everything, jongho notices that he lags behind and returns to tear him from the ground holding him back. the soles of his boots rip off in the sand as he hoists the captain over his shoulder, hongjoong twisting to see first that seonghwa's ahead of them before letting jongho move. whatever seonghwa's doing seems to cover them itself, turning about in a flaming hurricane and drizzled with fury. it melts bullets as they come; hongjoong can only hold on, fighting to keep seonghwa in his sight until they're safe.

they tumble back onto the ship like that while yeosang pulls the anchor up, yunho already at the helm to bring them back into the sky.

the ship sways with urgency, lurching as it snaps off port tethers and drinks in fresh air. greyjackets are launching beside them; it's one sea of commotion into another, the deck awash with warnings and calls and bloodied hands. they're followed, but the effort is surprisingly weak.

"i was busy while you were gone," yeosang somehow has the ability to sound whimsical, even spattered in gunpowder.

"doing what?"

"that."

yunho opens his mouth to respond but he's cut off as the ship jerks left, rocked by violent waves that interrupt his thought. he struggles to right them, if only to see the greyjacket port give in to inferno, seven rings of sticky hell wasteful to the ships it comes to touch.

yeosang looks unbelievably smug. "jongho showed me how to rig the lines."

if he weren't too busy fighting the aftershocks, yunho might laugh at the irony of it— but he takes the favor for what it is, brow still furrowed in concentration.

wooyoung, with a penchant for fixing things, has busied himself with san and seonghwa while the rest focus on shaking the few greyjackets that managed to make it off their tail. chase guns lay lead and fate into grey hulls that lose gravity with every shot until all that’s left is a pulsing ego and their heavy breath. now they can gather together in wooyoung's quarters with their adrenaline and tension, where the beds have been pushed together to house the two at the center. his sheets were stripped into makeshift bandages while yeosang rummages through their stash of medicines, reading off labels, though no one is certain what they're for.

the times have made wooyoung a surgeon, but the future bleeds before him and he's as lost as anyone else.

“put pressure on it!”

“i’m _putting_ pressure on it—”

“ _more_ , mingi, stuff the sheets into the wound!”

“you want me to—”

“i saw it in a movie once, just fucking do it!”

“you’ve seen movies?” but mingi does it, gritting his teeth as he pushes strips of cotton into the empty place in san’s chest, breath ribboned in muttered apologies as an empty groan greets his hasty hands. it seems like it's working, staunching the blood flow, but it isn't enough, and it won't be unless hongjoong does something about it.

seonghwa is barely conscious and hongjoong hates to wake him, but regret pulses through his veins. is this the price of a captain's dreams? they're killing his crew— or they will, if he lets the seconds pass him by, so he shakes seonghwa until their bones begin to bruise.

“seonghwa, please—”

( “i’m so tired.” ) the words were mouthed, not spoken.

“please,” he whispers-screams into the aching abyss of the sun. “help me help them, i know you can— help them and then we’ll sleep. i’ll take the spot by the wall because i know you like the edge of the bed, and i promise we can sleep all night and all day and all night over again but please, they’ve been brothers of mine and i can’t lose them. help them. help me. please.”

so seonghwa raises his wrist, eyes shut, but lashes moving. a noise of pain blemishes his mouth as hongjoong draws a knife across the skin there, fragile to a blade sharper than the edges of a broken dream. gold spills across his cupped palms and pools over the lip of the bowl he told yeosang to find, hurriedly pressed into his messy hands.

the room is hushed. silence is an open book, really.

“bandage him,” hongjoong orders, as he slips away. helians bounce back fast, but not always fast enough. the other didn’t have any visible wounds, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there at one point— he’ll not think about what might have happened to seonghwa before they’d taken him with them.

he tips the bowl over san’s lips, wooyoung cradling his head and his jaw with one careful hand each. san chokes on his blood and the intrusion coating on his tongue but it’s coerced down his throat by gravity and already the effects begin to brush the heat of the fever away. wooyoung dug the bullet out of him the moment he'd laid him down, so the wound begins to bind, sinew melting back into itself.

someone breathes words of disbelief, but hongjoong doesn’t really hear it.

he sets the bowl there and leaves wooyoung to wipe san’s golden lips clean. he skirts around bodies, hip bumping the tables they dragged in to drop himself in the corner, chest heaving.

they sit like that for a minute. trading glances, sipping on gold, until wounds close into battle scars and they wait for hongjoong to speak.

“i’m sorry—” he begins, but san hushes him with a wave. “i’m still sorry,” he continues anyways, “it was rash; you could’ve fucking died, san—”

“no. i’m alright now. we’re curious, though, and your eyes are far-away. they do that a lot when you think you’re alone. tell us who this is.”

were they? did they? he hasn’t the energy to school his face into a mask, rather lets the ache of years apart wash across his skin. “he’s. an old friend of mine.” hongjoong watches seonghwa’s chest rise and fall, lashes fanned across his cheeks. they’re sharper than he remembers. his jaw cuts glass; his skin cast in resin. he could go on.

“more than a friend.” not a question; san’s speaking with the voice of the stars again. the stars see everything. in day, the moon may hide, but the stars are always there whether they’re easy to see or not.

“...yeah, more than a friend. the sparklers i asked you to buy,” his gaze flickers towards jongho, who’s been subjected to being sandwiched between mingi and yunho as they fill themselves up on relief. “they reminded me of him; i’m sure you know why.”

the fireworks were hard to miss.

“and i couldn’t leave him down there, alone. ”

“i wasn’t expecting you to come.” everyone’s attention pulls towards seonghwa— still too weak to sit up, but recovered enough to open his eyes and fix hongjoong with a stare that’s seen better days and weaker moments. his voice drags over his teeth and folds into the wind. “i had no idea you were even alive.”

“stubborn as fuckin’ nails, this one,” mingi pipes up.

seonghwa’s lips quirk up at one corner; he knew that already. “thank you,” he murmurs, to no one in particular and everyone at once, though he looks at hongjoong when he says it. “you all risked your lives for someone you don’t know. hard to find people like that in this world.”

introductions are quiet and hasty, but somehow, seonghwa belongs— if not because hongjoong’s always left a light on for him by his side. there's nothing to do but keep him here anyways, and no one would question the red strings tied so clearly before them.

hongjoong feels close and full and satisfied by the time everyone stumbles back to their quarters. by the time seonghwa comes with him to his, like they've been together like this for years.

their wounds are closed but the night was long and bruises on the mind don’t heal the way skin does, so when they fall into bed they simply blow their worries out the window. the cosmos carry those worries aside, just like they did when they were young, folded up within one another for the moon to bid them goodnight.


End file.
